The secrets of discipleship

Question 1:

First of all, a guru is not a teacher; a guru is a person who has attained to a religious mode of living.

Religion is not information, it cannot be taught because religion is a way of living. The very presence of the guru is a communion. And to one living in contact with him, something is communicated - though not through words. The relationship is so intimate that it is less like teacher and pupil and more like lover and beloved.

The guru must himself be enlightened, he must himself have attained, because one cannot communicate that which one has not realized. Religious experience can be communicated only when it is firshand. A teacher need not be self-realized, but a guru must be. A teacher can give secondhand information from scriptures or traditions, but a guru cannot. A guru is a person who has realized truth. Now he is the original source; he himself has encountered reality, he is face to face with it. And the disciple comes in contact with a firsthand knowing because whatsoever is said or communicated to him by the guru is on his own authority.

Secondly, a guru is not aware of his guruship; he cannot be. A guru cannot claim that he is a guru - there is no claim like that. A person can only know whether or not he has fulfilled the condition of egolessness; otherwise he cannot encounter truth. Truth is encountered only when the ego is absolutely absent.

I always say that in religion, in spirituality, only disciples exist - because the guru is not present, he is only a presence. His very non-claiming, his nonegoistic, nonteaching attitude, and his living the truth, are the communion. So a person who claims to be a guru is only a teacher, he is not a guru.

There is no word in English to translate the word guru because the relationship between guru and disciple is basically Eastern. No such relationship has ever existed in Western culture and tradition, so no one in the West can understand what a guru is. At the most they can understand what a teacher is.

The relationship between guru and disciple is so intimate... it is like love. The reverence that is felt is like love, but with one difference: love is parallel, and reverence is for one who is above, one who is higher. Love creates friendship because the lover and the loved one are on the same level.

Reverence too is a kind of love but with a great difference: it is not on the same level; one person is higher. If there is a loving intimacy with the higher personality, reverence is automatically created around a guru. But it is not expected, it is not demanded.

Only disciples exist - because they are consciously disciples, they choose to be disciples. A guru does not choose, he acts. The action is one with his living so that he teaches by his very act. His teaching and his living are two aspects of a single existence. His very sitting, standing, walking, his talking, his silence - everything is an indication. Something happens through the guru's very existence and the disciple always has to be ready to receive it. A disciple means one who has an open mind, a receptive mind so he is not just learning but receiving. That is why trust is a basic component of being a disciple.

Whenever we are confronted with the unknown, no logic, no rational explanation is possible.

Whenever we are confronted with the unknown, only trust can lead us. If I say something about the known then you can discuss it with me because you also know it. We can argue about it, we can talk about it - a dialogue is possible. But if I talk about something that is absolutely unknown to you, then no dialogue is possible and there can be no argument. There can be no rational approach to it because reason can only work around the known.

The moment the unknown comes in, reason is useless: it becomes meaningless. Thinking is absurd because you cannot think about the unknown. It is just as if you are blind and I talk to you about light. You can only take what I say on trust; there is no other way.

The relationship between the disciple and the guru is a relationship of intimate trust. That doesn't mean blind faith, because the guru never expects you to believe in him - that is not an expectation.

But the very nature of the unknown is such that you cannot go a single step further without trust.

Trust is required of the disciple because he will not be able to take a single step into the unknown without trusting the guru. The unknown is dark, the field is uncharted - it is not bliss, it is not the ultimate - and the guru is always saying, "Jump into it! Do it!" But before you can jump, trust is needed or you will not jump. And knowledge can only come through a jump.

In science, a hypothesis is needed before there can be an experiment. Hypothesis means a tentative belief. If the experiment proves the hypothesis then it becomes a truth, but if the experiment disproves it, it becomes an untruth. But without a hypothesis, a tentative belief, there can be no experiment.

It is exactly the same with religion: trust is needed just as a hypothesis is needed in science. But there is a great difference between a scientific attitude and a trustful attitude. A person can believe hypothetically in a scientific proposition and yet be skeptical about it. Reverence is not needed because it concerns an objective phenomenon - you can experiment with it and see how it turns out. But in religion, a hypothetical belief is not enough because you are not tackling an objective problem that is outside you. You are tackling yourself; it is a subjective phenomenon. You will have to be involved, committed. You will not be doing the experiment from outside, you will be the experiment. You will have to jump in and become part of it. Great trust is needed.

So the relationship between guru and disciple is one of great trust, intimate love, reverence. But these things are not demanded. The moment they are demanded they become exploitation; the moment they are forced they become violent, because no one should force himself on anybody. It is not an enforcement on the part of the guru, it is a willingness on the part of the disciple to allow the guru to work.

But ordinarily, the disciple is unwilling and the guru is forcing. Then everything becomes nonsense.

The moment the guru tries to force something on someone, it cripples, it destroys, it kills, because it is a violent act against someone else's ego. But if the disciple is willing, if he gives the guru his complete trust - if it is not forced, if it is his own willing surrender - then a great transformation happens: the disciple is transformed by his very surrender.

This is a very decisive act: to surrender oneself to someone else completely, totally. It is not just faith in someone else, it is basically faith in oneself. You cannot surrender yourself if you are not confident enough about your decision, because it is a great decision - total and unconditional. Whenever a disciple surrenders himself his will is involved, and out of his will a decision is born. The disciple becomes a crystallized personality through surrender because the decision is so great and so total, so absolute and unconditional.

No surrender can be conditional; there can be no condition with the guru. You cannot say, "If you do this then I will surrender." Then it will not be surrender. There is no "if" - you surrender totally. You say, "Do whatsoever you like. I am in your hands. Ask me to jump into a wall, and I will jump!"

This very decision to surrender totally is transforming and crystallizing. The attitude of the disciple is always one of total surrender. Then the guru is able to do anything because, through your total receptivity to him, you can be in communion with him. Then by and by you change.

The matter is delicate, it is very sensitive. To change a living being, to change a human personality, is the greatest, most arduous, most delicate thing. The human personality is so complex, it is in so much conflict, with so much that is suppressed and perverted, that to change it and to make it flower in ecstasy, to make it a worthy present for the divine, is the greatest art or science possible.

But you must remember that what I have been talking about always comes from the disciple, never from the guru. If it comes from the guru then Krishnamurti is right: then gurudom is one of the most subtle and destructive exploitations. But Krishnamurti is not right really, because surrender has never been a demand of the guru; it is a basic condition for discipleship. Without the guru or a relationship of trust, it is very difficult to progress spiritually. In fact, it is not possible.

There is every possibility that a person may flower without any guru, but that person too will have to surrender, he will have to trust - if not a particular person then the whole. The basic requirements must be fulfilled. Whether they are fulfilled in connection with a person or not is immaterial.

It is easier to trust a person than to trust the whole. If you cannot trust a person you can never trust existence as such. If you cannot surrender in a personal relationship, you can never surrender to the impersonal divine. So the guru is a step toward the impersonal, a way to help one toward surrender to the whole, to existence itself.

To the human mind, all relationships are personal. It may be love, it may be respect, it may be anything, but it is personal. So the first step toward the realization of truth or of cosmic being is also bound to be personal. Someone will have to be used as a jumping board.

And there are other things also....

Words cannot communicate much that is meaningful as far as spirituality is concerned. The very phenomenon is such that it is inexpressible. If you hear some instrumental music, you cannot convey the meaning of it through words. You can use judgmental words - good, bad - but they do not convey anything. You can only convey your feelings, and those too, very inadequately.

If you have seen a flower, you can say it is beautiful. But that does not convey anything. Your words never convey the actual realization of the moment because they can mean anything to the person to whom they are conveyed. A person who has never seen beauty in any flower will hear your words and understand the meaning of them without understanding anything at all, because the word beauty does not mean anything to him.

Even concepts such as beauty are not totally expressible - we can only try to express them. Spiritual things are so impeccable, so silent, so infinite, that language destroys them. Words confine them to such a narrow sphere that the meaning cannot be conveyed. That is why I said that religion cannot be taught.

However difficult, mathematics can be taught because it is symbolic, and symbols can be conveyed.

Physics can be taught because there is nothing inexpressible about it. But the nearer you come to the human heart - for example, in poetry - the more you feel that your words have not conveyed the thing, that something has been left behind. The container is there, but the content has been left behind. The words have reached, but the meaning has been left behind. The flower has been received, but the perfume has died in the very giving of it.

Words are at the midpoint between science and religion. In science everything can be conveyed; in religion nothing can be conveyed. These are the three roads: science, which means reason, and is expressible; poetry and art, which are emotion, and are expressible up to a certain point beyond which they become inexpressible; and religion, spirituality, which is absolutely inexpressible. That is why the relationship between guru and disciple is not that of teacher and pupil.

Religion cannot be taught.

Then how is it conveyed? There are other methods.

When you are in love with someone, gestures become meaningful for the first time. A slight twinge in the face is detected, a slight waver in the eyes is known and understood. Unless you are in love you never pay attention to such minute things; you just see a face but you don't see its total complexity, you don't see its constantly changing patterns. You see the face as an external thing, you never see the content in it. But when you love someone the face is not just a figure but a living pattern. Minute things and subtle changes in expression are detected and known. Even before the lover has said something, you have known it. Even before the lover comes to know that he has felt something, you can detect it.

And reverence is even more subtle than love. The very existence of the guru is a communication.

Everything that he is constantly delivers messages which are caught, known, decoded, and understood by the reverent mind. These gestures, these living gestures, are a language.

The communication is even deeper when the relationship becomes ripe. When the disciple has blossomed into disciplehood and he understands completely the meaning of his guru's words and gestures, he is ripe. Then a silent communication, without gestures, without any linguistic symbols, is possible. This telepathic communication is the secret of the relationship. It is the most secret key of communion between guru and disciple. Only when this becomes possible has the disciple been accepted. Then there is no question of time and space. Then, wherever the disciple is, things can be communicated to him.

All these things have to be waited for patiently. It is a great waiting. You can never be in a hurry as far as spiritual learning is concerned because a hurried mind cannot go so deep, it cannot be so silent. The disciple should not be in a hurry to know, he should await the right moment - trusting, waiting, and preparing himself.

In the West they can never understand why a disciple should serve the guru. "Why should he be a servant?" They do not know that service is a way of communion. When a disciple serves a guru, when he waits and serves, the division drops - he becomes one with the guru. The guru's body and his own body are not two things now. He feels the pain of the guru, the illness of the guru. He feels the pleasure of the guru, the ecstasy of the guru. By and by, he becomes totally absorbed in the guru. Through this absorption with the guru's body he becomes one with the guru. You cannot become one spiritually if you cannot become intimate and one with the body; the body is the base.

The disciple goes on serving the guru and never asks any questions. This is a miracle! He will not say, "Teach me this or that," because even to say this is to mistrust the guru. When the moment is right he will be told; when the moment is right he will be taught. If the moment is not right he will just wait. Sometimes he will wait for years - even today. Twenty years may pass and he will just be waiting. He may have gone as a youth and now he is an old man - but still he is waiting! This very waiting, this patience, creates a situation in which the guru and the disciple are not two; they are one. The moment they become one, what is not expressible can be expressed.

Wittgenstein has said somewhere that what cannot be said can be shown. Saying needs no patience, but showing needs much patience. If I want to say something to you, I can say it this very moment. Your patience, your preparation is not needed. I can say it, and you will hear it. But if I want to show you something then you will have to make great preparations in order to see it. I cannot show it to you unless you have the capacity to see.

The guru is basically not saying anything but trying to show something; and if the disciple is aware, then things become clear by not intervening. Things are always clear, but the mind is confused - and a confused mind confuses things. As far as worldly things are concerned your mind cannot distort them too much because they are so objective that they do not depend on your mind. But the spiritual is so subjective, it depends so much on your vision, that a confused mind can misunderstand and destroy everything.

Destruction comes from our past accumulated knowledge. The mind has known and accumulated so much that it comes in and muddles everything; the old has come in between.

What you come to know must not be interpreted. Everything that is new must be seen with a new mind. If one can put this knowledge aside and see into things directly, immediately, then things are always clear. Existence is so innocently pure and clear, everything is so crystal clear, that it is a miracle how the human mind confuses it. This confusion comes through interpretation; it comes from using all that is known to understand that which is not known.

If we can be totally aware of anything new that is presented to us, if we can become receptive and aware of its presence, then it goes directly to the heart. What I am saying may appear irrational, but it is the truth. The mind never understands, only the heart understands. The center of understanding is never the mind, it is always the heart. The heart is always pure, fresh, and virgin; it is never burdened by the past. But the mind is never virgin, it is never new; it is always old. It is always of the past, it is always of the dead - an accumulation of dead experiences. So whenever the mind is working, you always misunderstand - you are bound to. But when it is not working - when it is quiet, silent, absolutely nonexistent, when only awareness is there - a gap is created and the door to the heart is opened.

The heart understands without any interpretation; its understanding is direct and immediate. You just understand - you KNOW, "This is so." This putting the mind aside is what I call meditation. If you can see things through the heart, if you can contact existence through the heart, then you are in meditation; but if you are always living through the mind you will never be in meditation.

It can be said that the heart is the faculty for meditation, and the mind is the faculty which functions against meditation; and the two cannot work simultaneously. If the mind is functioning, the heart cannot. It goes away because it is not needed; it goes to sleep. Only when the mind is not working does the heart come to the surface to breathe, to see. It comes only when the mind is not needed, when the mind has been discarded. And the moment the heart comes in contact with the existential, you feel the ecstasy, the beatitude. Everything becomes divine. It is divine, but then you know it.

When the heart is in contact with the world, the world is divine; when the mind is in contact with the world, the world is material. Mind cannot know anything beyond matter and the heart cannot know anything below the spiritual. That is why those who have been heart-oriented have said that the world is unreal, illusory; it is maya - just a magical show. There is a reason for saying so:

because the heart cannot come below the spiritual, it can never know the material. The material world becomes illusory, unreal, dreamy - as if it were not.

The mind-oriented have denied the spiritual. They say that it is a dream, fiction which is nowhere to be found. Only matter exists for them; there is nothing spiritual: the spiritual is illusory, dreamlike, foolish. Nietzsche has said somewhere, "There are people who say that Jesus was a genius, a wise man. But I would like to say that he was an idiot!" To a person looking at existence through the mind, everything of the heart seems idiotic.

The East has been heart-oriented; the West has been mind-oriented. The Western mind has been able to create a great scientific edifice but the Eastern mind could not - how can you create a science from innocence? It is impossible. So the East has been living unscientifically.

But the West has never been able to know what meditation is. At the most they could pray. But to pray is not the point. You can only pray with the mind; you can go on repeating formulas. If there is no mind, prayer will be silent. You will not be able to pray - there will be no words. With the heart you can only be prayerful.

In the West they could not develop a spiritual science, they could not develop meditation. They converted meditation into either concentration or contemplation - it is neither - and thereby missed the point. Concentration is a mental process. When the mind is concentrated and the whole thought process is focused, it becomes thinking. It is not a question of the heart.

Meditation is neither contemplation nor concentration. It is a nonmental, nomind living. It is to be in contact with the world with no mind in between. The moment mind is absent, there is no barrier between you and existence, between you and the divine, because the heart cannot draw boundaries, it cannot define. By defining things, the mind creates barriers, boundaries, frontiers. But with the heart, existence becomes frontierless. You end nowhere, and no one else begins anywhere. You are everywhere, one with the whole of existence.

The heart cannot feel duality - duality is a mental creation. The mind divides, analyzes; it cannot work without division. That is why science goes on analyzing molecules, atoms, electrons: dividing existence into smaller and smaller parts. The more divisions there are, the more the mind is at ease, because then existence becomes more defined; it can be manipulated, it can be easily known. But the vaster it is, the greater and more infinite existence becomes, the more the mind feels awe. It cannot define it - existence becomes mysterious.

The scientific method of tackling a mystery is analysis - analyze a thing and solve the mystery. If the whole world could be analyzed there would be no mystery. But the mystery remains unsolved, because to solve it requires synthesis.

Drop all definitions, drop all boundaries, and everything becomes mysterious. Then you are one with the mystery; then everything is divine. That is the only solution and the only way to know existence. Let scientific definitions drop, and a world without definitions, without boundaries, comes into existence: a synthesized whole, an organic unity, a crystallized oneness. This oneness - the feeling of it, the knowing of it, and the living of it - is what I mean by God.

Meditation is the way to know God. Mind is the way to know matter. Mind and meditation are exact opposites - different dimensions. You cannot have it both ways. You can reach the mind, but in that moment the heart will not work. You can reach the heart, but in that moment the mind will not work.

You can use both, but not simultaneously; they are polar opposites.

Without meditation, everything is rational and yet absurd because it is meaningless. With meditation, everything is irrational but meaningful. And the moment life is meaningful, life is. When it is not meaningful, when it is rationally understood but meaningless, then it is not. It is as dead as can be.

This is the paradox: with the mind, you can understand but the meaning is lost; with the heart, you cannot understand but the meaning is known, felt, realized.

With the mind, everything can be categorized and manipulated, but you are nullified through it and in the end there is no mystery. Once the mind has understood everything, nothing remains but suicide, because no one can live without mystery. The more life is a mystery, the more it is worth living.

Religion is knowing the mystery and still not destroying it. The religious way of knowing is very different - it is neither logical nor rational; it is absolutely fresh. But our minds become uneasy with it because we are so obsessed with reason. This very minute part of the mind, reason, has become our sum total, our all.

Life is not rational; it is basically irrational - and this irrationality of life and existence is the mystery.

If everything becomes mysterious to you, then you are here and now in the divine. With meditation, the mystery is revived: you again come in contact with the mysterious.

Meditation is of the heart, and the heart has its own methods of understanding which are absolutely different from reason, absolutely different from the mind. I would like all of you to know more of the heart.

The guru/disciple relationship is an understanding of the heart. The East has so many secret keys, but even a single key is enough because a single key can open thousands and thousands of locks.

The relationship between guru and disciple is one such key.